This week I attended a four day Responsive Classroom workshop. Each day of the conference had a different focus, but the importance of academic choice resonated across all four days. Bottom line: Children perform better when they have some say in how or what they learn. This relates to RSA Animate's video featuring Dan Pink's keynote address, The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others where he claims autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the best motivators (more than money!) for tasks requiring conceptual and creative thinking. While Dan Pink's words were settling in my brain, I read Stephani Sutherland's article When We Read, We Recognize Words As Pictures and Hear Them Spoken Aloud. This got me thinking about how people process information. For example, I often say inside my brain must look like Photoshop's interface. When I am trying to construct knowledge from new sources I think in terms of graphic design. Information becomes pictures and like a hand with a mouse, my brain moves the images around until I have a representation of the content. This image gets saved to my "cloud" so I can easily "download" it whenever needed.
The process described above was taking place in my head as I read The New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension: New Opportunities and Challenges for Students with Learning Difficulties by Castek, Zawilinski, McVerry, O'Byrne, and Leu (2011), and Online Collaborative Inquiry: Classroom Blogging Ventures and Multiple Literacies by Judy M. Arzt, Ph.D. (2012). After completing the readings, I had an image in my head (and some doodles on napkins) which I was about to begin translating back to text when I decided to exercise my autonomy! For this week, I am forgoing writing my response to the readings in order to show you my thoughts via an infographic made using Piktochart (free!). This is a glimpse into how my mind processes information and what keeps me motivated as a student.
The process described above was taking place in my head as I read The New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension: New Opportunities and Challenges for Students with Learning Difficulties by Castek, Zawilinski, McVerry, O'Byrne, and Leu (2011), and Online Collaborative Inquiry: Classroom Blogging Ventures and Multiple Literacies by Judy M. Arzt, Ph.D. (2012). After completing the readings, I had an image in my head (and some doodles on napkins) which I was about to begin translating back to text when I decided to exercise my autonomy! For this week, I am forgoing writing my response to the readings in order to show you my thoughts via an infographic made using Piktochart (free!). This is a glimpse into how my mind processes information and what keeps me motivated as a student.
How can I use this in my classroom?
When I envision my ideal classroom, I see every one of my first graders blogging away on iPads. This is not my reality. While I would love to have my students blog, I don't know how feasible it will be. As of right now, my classroom will have one iPad mini thanks to the generosity of family, friends, former students, and total strangers who donated to my Donor's Choose project. I have big plans for that little iPad, but not a lot of time to get them all done. I would like to attempt a class blog and feature a different student blogger each week. However, until I have more resources and a better handle on my daily schedule, blogging will remain a goal for the future.